by D. M. Pruden
Confused, Hayden and Pavlovich stared at each other then both regarded the distracted scientist. After a few seconds, an explanation burst forth from him.
“Stella is an empath. She can experience the emotions of others, sometimes without being aware of it. It is the reason why we avoided contact with other people for most of her life. It is so difficult for everyone.”
“I think I know something about that,” said Hayden, “but what has that to do with the Malliac?”
“We discovered very early that Stella forms a strong connection to them when they are near. At first it was a vague premonition that she gave voice to. We learned quickly to trust her premonitions and to hide or move on before they arrived. But later, after several such encounters, her experiences became more intense—more visceral. I think the aliens can determine our location through Stella’s empathic abilities.”
“Can they detect her when she is sedated like this?” asked the Captain.
Gabriel looked at his sleeping daughter and touched her hand. “No. When she first senses them, I administer a sedative before the connection becomes too strong.”
“She experienced an intense reaction,” said Hayden.
“I have been administering a mild calmative drug to her since you found us. For the longest time it has been only the two of us. With so many people aboard this ship...perhaps she was tempted by all the emotions around her and went off the meds. If she did that, the strength and abundance of the crew’s feelings would overwhelm the subtle first signs of contact. She possibly didn’t notice the Malliac probing for her.”
Hayden watched the sleeping girl and felt a wave of guilt.
“So there is a reasonable chance that they won’t sniff around if they lost their connection?” said Pavlovich.
“I’m afraid not, Captain. Her response was very strong; the strongest in many years. I suspect they have a very good idea of where to look.”
“Well, crap!” He stalked across the room and accessed an interface on the wall. “Bridge! Sound battle stations. Prepare for departure in...” He looked questioningly at Gabriel.
“Perhaps twenty minutes before they arrive, but it may be sooner,” said the doctor.
“Double shit!” Pavlovich pressed the button again and spoke to the comm link again. “Make ready to depart immediately. Cora, send out the bugs again to see if we can pick up their static.” He terminated the connection before anyone could respond.
“It would have been nice to know about this when we picked you up, Doctor.” He turned on his heel and stormed out of the infirmary.
Hayden looked at Stella. How she must have suffered being around so many people she didn’t know and not being allowed to experience her gift. He imagined the proximity of the crew was too tempting for her to resist. He knew from his own life how overwhelming temptation could be.
He’d never met an empath before and had only heard second-hand stories about them. As far as he knew, most of them were institutionalized in their early teens. Those who didn’t get locked up and regularly sedated often committed suicide or found their way to isolated places with few people around to mess them up.
As he began to leave, Gabriel called to his back.
“Lieutenant, there may be something I can do to help.”
“What is it, Doctor?”
“One of the tactics we’ve used in the past has been to offer the Malliac a distraction to allow our escape. We employ it far earlier, but it still might work.”
Impatient, Hayden asked, “What do you have in mind?”
“Drones. I have several specialized ones on my ship, which is stored in your hangar. When we detect an event, I launch one to distract the aliens so we can slip away.”
“Were you responsible for the probe that met us at the light gate?”
“Yes, most certainly, though I don’t understand why you had to destroy it.”
“What is on your drone that grabs the aliens’ interest?”
The scientist blushed and hesitated before he answered. “I’m afraid the Malliac are not the only ones who were hunting for microsingularities. I, too, have been harvesting them from wrecked star drives in this system. I install them in my probes and send them out. They serve as an excellent bait.”
“So you give them what they are looking for?”
“I suppose so, but you would do the same to survive.”
“There is no need to be defensive, Doctor. I can’t fault your motivation. And you’re right. I would likely do something similar were I in your situation. How soon can you launch a drone?”
“I can deploy one within a couple of minutes.”
“Okay, proceed. I’ll inform the captain.”
Hayden took a final glance at the peaceful face of Stella. He advised Pavlovich of the plan over the comm and then left orders with the medical synth to keep the girl under until further notice. As he walked to the bridge, he hoped his faith in Gabriel was not misplaced and that Scimitar could slip away unnoticed.
There was no way they could survive another battle.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Stella Sedated
SCIMITAR HAD BEEN underway for seventy-three days without incident. The tension aboard the ship since their hasty escape from the wreck of the Odyssey had been eroded down to boredom by routine.
Doctor Gabriel’s tactic of baiting the Malliac with a drone proved effective, though it had taken several weeks of travel at one-quarter light speed to convince the captain they had shaken their ghostly pursuer.
Using the coordinates supplied by the scientist, the Scimitar exited the Mu Arae system in search of the mysterious alien star-gate. The fact that most of the crew didn’t believe the wormhole existed was immaterial; unable to access their own light-gate and pursued by hostiles, there was little other choice than to attempt to find Gabriel’s unicorn or face more than a decade of space travel.
Hayden was uneasy not having the use of the orbital bugs, but they were not capable of operating at relativistic speeds, despite Cora’s best efforts to address the limitation. They had spent the first ten days travelling at slower velocity, carefully monitoring their wake for any sign of the static discharge. When nothing appeared over that time, Pavlovich ordered the drones retrieved and their speed increased.
Hayden rubbed his temples, grateful that the headaches were finished. They had become increasingly intense over the past couple of weeks, and at the captain’s order, he had been forced to endure a complete physical workup. Pavlovich seemed to worry that the empathic encounter with the girl might be the cause. It turned out to be a fault in his implant.
It was rare for the LINK tech to fail, but it did happen. There was no way to repair the damage with the resources aboard. More sophisticated facilities on Earth were needed for that. The medical synth told him the headaches would go away as he became accustomed to no longer having an implant.
For the first time since his arrival, he was grateful to be assigned to the outdated vessel. Without his LINK, his role as XO on a more modern warship would be hopeless to fulfill. As things stood, he could still perform the bulk of his duties using the ship’s antique manual interfaces, though he found himself exhausted from the unfamiliar effort. Pavlovich, while somewhat sympathetic to his new disadvantage, did not cut him much slack in what was expected.
As was his habit at the end of his shift, he went to the infirmary to check on Stella. She had been kept under heavy sedation since their departure from Mu Arae, and he felt responsible for her current fate.
The lights in her room were dimmed, and only the blinking face of the medical equipment gave any illumination. Hayden, as he did every time, stood at the side of the bed and held her hand. He didn’t know if she was aware of him, but he wanted to try to assure her on some level that she was not forgotten.
A movement in the corner of the room startled him.
“I think she would like that you come to see her,” said Cora from the shadows. She reclined in a chair and looked like she
had just woken up.
“I wouldn’t know about that. I just think of it as something I would appreciate if I were in her place.”
“You’re a nice man, Lieutenant.”
Hayden was grateful the dim light hid his warming cheeks. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew me better, Cora.”
“I dunno. Travelling together in this flying can reveals a person’s character. It’s hard to not get real.” He sensed her smiling in the darkness.
“Do you visit often?” he asked.
“I come when I can. I think I was more tired than I thought last night, because I fell asleep in this chair. This is one of the most peaceful places on the ship. You can barely hear the hums, pings, and pops of the hull.”
“I suppose even you might need a break from Scimitar on occasion.”
“Oh, I don’t need any real breaks except to sleep. I love this old boat. She takes a lot of work, and keeping her flying is more than a full-time job, but there is something special about her that makes it less like a labour. Do you know what I mean?”
“I don’t think I’ve been aboard long enough to appreciate that.”
“And somebody’s waiting for you back home, isn’t she?”
His heart ached as he realized how far away he was from Katie in more ways than one.
Cora stood and stretched before walking to the opposite side of Stella’s bed. The blue lights of the equipment lit her face like a kabuki actor’s. She reached across the bed and put her hand on top of his. “Time and distance can heal, Lieutenant.”
She looked down at Stella’s peaceful face and adjusted a wayward strand of hair on her forehead. “If she were awake, she could probably tell you what you are really feeling. It is quite a gift this girl has. I hope the cap’n lets her wake up soon to enjoy it.”
She looked into Hayden’s eyes and added, “So that we all can benefit from it.”
Cora strode leisurely to the doorway and spoke to him without turning around. “Goodnight, Lieutenant.”
With her gone, the room fell into a silence periodically broken by the clicks of the devices connected to Stella.
Hayden wondered if she dreamed while she was under. A flash of resentment rose up in him on her behalf. It wasn’t right for Pavlovich to keep her sedated. Her father had argued for her to be allowed to awaken and be managed with a mild sedative, but the captain feared she would prove to be a beacon in the darkness for the Malliac.
Stella’s eyebrow twitched and turned to a slight frown. Had she heard, or rather, felt Hayden’s emotions on the matter? He released her hand and stepped back from the bed.
Perhaps it was his proximity, or even the physical contact with her that allowed her to connect to him, even under sedation.
If that was even what had happened.
Maybe it was just a dream she experienced. But the timing of it was too coincidental for him to easily accept that argument.
Maybe Pavlovich was right. It might be better off for everyone if she remained asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Pavlovich Relents
“PLEASE, CAPTAIN?”
Ishmael Gabriel was nearly in tears.
“I will tell what I told you two days ago, Doctor. Your daughter will remain sedated.” The captain glared at the scientist to emphasize his point and then returned his attention to his cooling supper.
The distraught father turned to Hayden, who had followed him into the captain’s quarters. “Lieutenant, can’t you reason with this man?”
Pavlovich fixed his first officer with a withering look. Kaine frowned, annoyed he was caught between the two men on this issue.
“He has a valid argument, Captain. We’ve been accelerating toward maximum sub-light for the past few weeks. We can’t use the drones to check our flank. If we want any kind of warning we are being followed, the young woman’s abilities are the only available option...unless we choose to reduce velocity and deploy the bugs.”
“We might as well stop dead in our tracks if we do that,” the captain said, directing his sarcasm at Gabriel, “since we don’t know where we are going or what we are looking for.”
“I told you that we search for...”
“All I received from you is a set of coordinates that you assure me is the location of the wormhole. We will reach that destination in six hours, and so far there is no indication of anything ahead of us.”
“There is some degree of uncertainty to be expected in translating such things into our units of measurement. We may be off by a small amount, but I assure you it is there.” A sheen of sweat glistened on Gabriel’s forehead.
“What do you consider an acceptable margin for error? An AU? Half a parsec? Two?”
“No, nothing that large...”
“I’ll be frank with you, Doctor. I never believed in your fairy tale about an ancient race or a wormhole. The only reason I indulged you was because the coordinates you gave were only a slight deviation from a direct course to a system with an active light-gate. We will lose, at most, a few weeks by looking, and I can tell my commanding officer that we did not ignore you, thereby covering my own ass when we eventually return you to Earth. Not that it will matter, as everyone I answer to will be long retired or dead.”
He turned his attention to Hayden. “Mister Kaine, I believe we have spent far too much time on this snipe hunt. Give orders to adjust our heading to GI613 and increase our acceleration to maximum.”
“Captain, no!” pleaded Gabriel.
Hayden felt pity for the man, whose entire life’s work was at the point of being either confirmed or refuted. However, he was inclined to be of a similar mind as Pavlovich. They couldn’t afford the fuel or the time to stop to look for something that might not exist.
“Sir, with respect, I checked the computations, and we can hold our current velocity at point three-six C for twelve more hours before we lose our trajectory window. May I recommend that we devote a little more time to the search? As a precaution against pursuit, we can awaken the girl.”
“Is there any guarantee that she can detect these aliens while traveling at relativistic speeds?”
“I...I don’t know,” said Gabriel.
“I thought not,” said Pavlovich. His expression softened, and he continued, “But we are flying blind, and it would be nice to know if they are following us.”
Gabriel’s eyes brightened. “I can keep her sedated. I am familiar with the appropriate dosage. She stopped taking them without my knowledge when we came aboard. I can make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
“Will it affect her sensitivity to the Malliac?” asked Hayden.
“Only slightly.”
Pavlovich put down his fork and stared at the anxious Gabriel for several long seconds. He shook his head. “Very well, it isn’t healthy for her to be kept under, so I grant you permission to awaken her. Mister Kaine, we will proceed with your plan, but I am making you personally responsible for the girl. If she shows the slightest indication of contact with the aliens, she is to be put back to sleep immediately. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir, I understand,” replied Hayden.
“Thank you so very much, Captain. You will not regret this,” said Gabriel.
“I already do, Doctor. We will spend the next twelve hours looking for your wormhole, but not a second longer. Now will you two please leave so I can finish my supper in peace?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Stella’s Curse
“ARE YOU SURE you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, Lieutenant Kaine. Just a little weak from lying in a bed for so long. I appreciate you showing me around the ship. The walking is good exercise for me.”
Hayden and Stella strolled slowly along a corridor of the engineering section. Her demeanour toward him was shy. Perhaps she was ashamed of their last encounter in his quarters. They hadn’t spoken much of that event, since neither of them seemed particularly comfortable with the topic.
Sometimes, when he recalled it, Hayden
found himself amused and even a bit proud. He liked to imagine that his animal magnetism was what originally drew Stella to throw herself at him. But at other times, when his ego didn’t run so hot, he was embarrassed for the poor girl who was driven by forces beyond her ability to moderate.
She was like a leaf on the wind. Her entire life was spent isolated from anyone other than her father. She must have experienced the chaotic emotional mélange of so many crewmen like a small boat on a stormy sea. She didn’t come to him because of any natural attraction; she was drawn to his doorstep by the strength of the emotions he had put out.
The mild sedative seemed to be working, though Hayden was also conscious of his emotional state and tried to remain professionally detached while around her. She seemed so small and vulnerable, and he didn’t want to be responsible for anything that might overpower the drug and send her back to the infirmary.
He deliberately selected more isolated sections of the ship for this tour, as far from the crew quarters and common areas as possible. Down here, Cora’s engineering team were the only ones they were likely to encounter, and they were too busy on their work. Besides, Cora had a gentle spirit that Hayden didn’t worry would stimulate Stella’s empathic abilities.
They stopped in front of one of the few external viewports. The stars hung still in the distance.
“It is hard to believe we are moving,” she said, mirroring his thoughts.
He looked at her askance and wondered for a moment if she was also telepathic.
He pointed at a random star and said, “If we were to watch carefully, we would see parallax shifts, but their movements are very slow...”
“Because they are so far away, and we aren’t moving close enough to the speed of light yet,” she said, completing his sentence. “My entire life has been spent in one spaceship or another, Lieutenant.”
Hayden said, “Of course. I’m sorry for being condescending.”
She smiled at him and returned her eyes to the window. “Actually, you were kind of cute.”
